Conversions are a secret that each web marketer would give up to get to the end of a rainbow in a world without rainbows. This means that more individuals will subscribe or purchase on your website, implying that you will have higher leads and sales.
From what has been established, it is clear that color is an important aspect that attracts online users. This is evident from a survey of 500 consumers, and 39% expressed that color was the most critical visual aspect of the business’s website.
However, the actual question of what color of click-here button is ideal is well contended. Can using specific colors for CTA (call to action) buttons help boost the conversion rate at your website?
I’ll share the research results if you are unsure which color fits the call to action button on your websites and emails.
How Placing Call-to-Action Buttons Can Determine Your Success
The goals, objectives, and factors 2: Where on the page should the call to action button be? This is where the moot question regarding CO2 increases comes in, or rather, the question that does not have a definite answer. It is also necessary to follow certain principles.
- Follow established standards
- Learn as much about your site’s users as is possibly achievable
Of course, putting forward something extraordinary when visiting a website makes no sense. The login button is almost always in the top right corner, depending on the style. Well, the reader might wonder: So, why change it? You will not benefit from these changes as you cannot do anything protracted.
This is coupled with the fact that people work based on a mental blueprint, in which they already know where something should be, and it just has to get there. Well, I mean, maybe there is anticipation for it there. As a result, nothing interferes with the routines and well-established habits that dominate the working environment.
How can we expand an area where more call-to-action buttons can be placed after the header section?
It should be so unique in an ideal world that one could identify it with closed eyes. The user should encounter them naturally during their visits to the site. The placement of the element should be logical and conform to a user’s usage pattern.
This is easier said than done, confirming that most people have difficulty practicing what they preach.
What Do the Conversion Experts Say About Button Color?
There is much controversy about what should or should not be done when optimizing for conversion, mainly when using color.
Digital marketers agree on some of the most essential strategies for conversions:
- How to Generate the Feeling of Urgency
- Leveraging social proof
- Using clear design concepts
- Selecting the right Lead Magnet
But color? That’s a tricky one.
You may have seen many marketers bragging about discovering the best approach to color enhancement.
- The Generalizers: This conversion rate optimizer will pledge to follow general, broad guidelines and requirements. However, they will not delve into the psychological perspective of their target customers to create a fine-tuned plan.
- The Pigeonholers: The second type swears by very concrete steps. They will want you to know that it is possible to learn certain secrets that could help you boost your conversion rate. They will tell you that this color, that font, or This type of layout will ensure success for you.
- The Perpetual Testers: The third type will not follow any specific strategy. These optimizers have learned from the real world that not all methods will be effective for everyone. Instead, they will advise you to try almost anything randomly and eventually find something that works.
When faced with the question of which is the best CTA button color, each camp will have a different answer:
- They will explain that some empirical findings or generalizations can be made concerning color. As mentioned earlier, some colors are suitable for some industries but should not be used in any situation.
- The readers of The Pigeonholers will sing to one color better in the overall conversion than any other color.
- Despite what the Perpetual Testers have to tell us, the presence of color may do so, but not on a ‘formal’ or ‘methodical’ basis.
Indeed, they cannot all be correct in their assumptions.
This is why graphics, copy, call-to-actions, and everything we focus on for conversion could just be a bear trap, while color could be non-existent. Or is there yet another trick concealed behind it?
Now that we know some basic guidelines on color psychology let’s proceed to the tips for choosing your website button colors.
Basics of Color Psychology (and Why It’s Complicated for Businesses)
For ages, companies have exalted the concept of color and its impact on brand identification and strategy.
The above infographic depicts widely known companies that have selected their brand colors to elicit particular feelings.
Here are a few takeaways from how top brands choose their logo color to fit their brand personality:
- Tickling our funny bones is orange, which is upbeat and cheerful, just like the symbol of Nickelodeon. And, of course, I want to be able to emphasize the aspect that the product is orange-flavored.
- Red is preferable for strong logo identification, which denotes a dangerously targeted logo like Coca-Cola or Targetlogo.
- Blue is applied by brands that need your trust to be their customer and those they create for daily use. Or ask them for specific tasks like fixing a home or compound, helping prepare medicine, etc. That’s why you identify blue in the logos of Walmart, Lowe’s, and Pfizer, among other brands.
- Green signifies natural resources, which are associated with health and tranquility. This symbol is probably one of the most used and can be seen in the logos of companies like Whole Foods and Publix, to name but a few.
Psychologically, many debates suggest that color directly and powerfully impacts individuals. It can be argued that it is not a question of which colors are generally better and always preferable to others.
Below are some examples of how color works that have been marked by various research. These examples also prove that the perception of color has layers of psychology.
- Cognitive performance: The influence of color A benefit of using blue is that it enhances performance in difficult-oriented work and creative tasks. However, red can further improve performance on tasks – especially those that are more straightforward and detailed.
- Aggression and sports performance: Coding the male actors wearing red clothing, compared to the blue or gray color, are likely to be perceived as aggressive. Lastly, the color red is worn to enhance the ability of male athletes, particularly in combat sports, so that they can be in a position to emerge winners in the fight. However, this advantage is not related to females or female athletes.
- Heart rate and blood pressure: Several researchers have written their papers to indicate how the different shades of colors can affect one pulsation and blood pressure, where red will cause the heart rate and blood pressure to go up, and blue and green will have a reducing effect. However, a question arises regarding the reliability of such outcomes and whether these statistics are significant.
- Cultural and geographical differences: It is seen that there are general trends in the emotional attribution of different colors across the whole world. But there are colors that each culture and each country has special significance to them. For example, the perception of the black color refers to negative emotions, such as sadness, grief, or mourning. While Greece, like Italy and Spain, also has purple as a mourning color, China has white. Another example is studying the differences in CTA color, where it was found that the A/B test results depend on the users’ country.
Wellbeing implies that what a person takes away from this information reflects their overall wwellbeing Thus, it can be seen that color has the potential to affect how people feel, but several issues are involved.
For instance, gender is a significant factor, while culture participates; other effects of color can hardly be quite noticeable.
Does the CTA Button Color Matter?
Choosing a “perfect” color may seem theoretically possible: I considered making a post more culturally and demographically suitable for my target audience and brand. However, the color choice reflects most of your visual image, which differs from only the button colors.
Well, it is possible to think about the feeling tones associated with the call to action (CTA) button hue. You should also perform A/B testing to help you make suitable adjustments to your website pop-up advertisements and email marketing.
For instance, you have your call-to-action color blue and later decide to make it red, only to realize that the conversion rates have increased. Does this mean that red many times rather than blue performs better?
You must understand that it is not as simple as seeing a green button and thinking it is an obvious example of people manipulating their environment for no reason.
Hence, the design becomes one of the four variables you should consider, together with your brand and audience. Although the specifics of color are difficult to study individually or even several simultaneously, one could hardly argue that not all colors convert well.
Hmm, does the color of the call-to-action button truly impact its performance? This element can influence the chances that users would click on links on your website or the buttons you design. But this doesn’t mean that some colors are always superior to others.
Small businesses do not have much spare time to spend on research and a large amount of money on consumer surveys on how they feel about each shade of a website’s color scheme.
But be assured, it is very easy to use button color to achieve more significant conversion rates.
Here is a guide on selecting the most appropriate color for your business.
3 Key Tips for Choosing the Best CTA Button Color
Whether there are breaks or no breaks, the question remains: What is the optimal CTA button color? It is imperative to have the best color that fits well with your website’s overall visual identity and layout and, subsequently, the layouts of your email campaigns.
In the following lines, we will outline three easy ways to get more out of your CTA colors.
- Be Bold and High-Contrast
- Be On-Brand
- Be Consistent
1. Your CTA Color Needs to Pop
A clear, attention-grabbing call-to-action tends to produce a more significant conversion rate. Hence, any shifts in hue that brought more attention to the CTA button should boost your conversions.
You should focus on two forms of color contract when creating a CTA button:
- The basic design principles include choosing contrasting button colors and backgrounds.
- Difference between the colors of the text used for the button and the colors of the button.
For instance, if your button color is lighter than the background color, the contrast will be problematic, leading to poor visibility.
However, if the contrast is amplified, which virtually triples the contrast, then instantly we have: It will increase your chance of conversions, for your changes will be more noticeable to a potential visitor.
The qualitative evidence does not require a comprehensive study on how colors can impact the emotions of website users. The only thing you want to avoid that ‘blend in the background’ look is buttons, so just make them stand out.
Here’s an example of an attention-grabbing CTA button with high contrast:
The other detail to consider is the general feel of your page about the color used. If the color you use for one of your web pages is the same color occupying the place of your call to action, that button will not be conspicuous.
Headlines in contrasting colors stand out, so use this approach to make your call to action prominent. If you select the background color and aim to provide a white background, a bright color or even black is suitable for drawing users’ attention to the ads placed.
In 2011, HubSpot prominently identified a case where red buttons were more effective than green ones through A/B testing. Specifically, the red button was clicked roughly 21% more times than the green one.
However, let me explain the scenario where those red and green buttons are placed. Perhaps red performed better than green in conversion because green was the overarching color of the page. Therefore, red created more contrast:
As you can now observe from the above images, the green button is more harmonized with the rest of the image. Even its logo is green, and there are ample variations to green from the screenshot at the right end. The most prominent icon featured there is green, representing the most notable feature.
On the other hand, while thinking about the composition of this or that color on the web page, the viewer can hardly find a droplet of red on this page. Hence, it is bright and populates the page; however, it fits the page’s color palette appropriately.
Indeed, tests suggest that brands can boost their sales by up to 35%, ensuring that their CTA color will be contrasted.
- To get the most contrast, pick a complementary color: I say it is directly opposite to your primary color on the wheel of colors.
- Another high-contrast color is a triadic color: one that the band lies, and one that color is a third of the distance around the color wheel with comparison color.
2. Your Colors Need to Be On-Brand
Your brand identity is the final element to consider when deciding on the CTA colors When designing a CTA button or any other CTA, there are several factors to consider. If you have a coherent color scheme for your logo, website, popups, and empopupsrketing, it would naturally imply that your buttons should match this color scheme.
For example, IPSY is an application that delivers makeup products to customers as per the specified frequency. The brand’s color is pink, but the company can use other related colors occasionally when designing its products. They go further to facilitate pink padded envelopes to send their products in.
Their website and app’s color theme is pink, cream, & black.
Based on what customers get to preview and select using the app they use every month, the brand knows that they should always be able to associate such colors with it.
Sincerely to that policy, IPSY maintains the consistency of the color scheme in its promotional emails alongside the CTAs.
The sole CTA black button is balanced against the pink and cream page design.
At the bottom of each email, there is a bright blue CTA button to promote their SMS marketing list:
To really highlight ‘Get It’ as a call to action, ensuring that the overall button color is very contrasting to the rest of the brand color palette is quite effective.
IPSY shows that individuals are determined to embrace science and technology and are ready to voice their voices through voting to exercise their freedoms. What is more important is to have a brand color, and no more than one color, but to have a choice of colors that can represent your brand. That way,
3. Your Colors Need to Be Consistent
By choosing colors that are colorful and likely to be seen by the user or subscriber, marketers also utilize colors to help users and subscribers locate specific CTAs they need to click on.
For example, in this text you are quite familiar with, you are aware that when a text is blue, commonly, it means it’s a hyperlink. This uniformity helps internet users all over the globe identify hyperlinks. It is clear that if the text on a page is blue, then you can interact with it with simply one click.
The same applies to the call-to-action buttons: If you use click here buttons in a single color, you’re conditioning your visitors to look for that color, and that’s why it must be consistent.
For example, you may consistently place your CTAs in the same hue of orange as the CTA, an essential element of every website. This is useful in helping your users find the orange buttons very easily, especially when they are merely skimming through your material.
Do not let your users know what is clickable, what is not, or what you have changed; headers using the same color as other items are not actionable.
As such, don’t overload your users with too many call-to-action colors on the same page.
What would be best for a business if the CTA buttons were all the same color? Not necessarily. It is possible to differentiate the color of some buttons if you wish to make some buttons appear more ‘prominent.’
Bottom Line on Best CTA Button Color
When it comes to the dilemma of what color is more effective in swaying the crowd’s decision, it cannot be denied that it is extremely difficult to point out one color that works best. As much as one might like the intended message of this book, there are simply too many ways the numbers can go and too many myths and misconceptions floating around to draw any definitive conclusion.
Since the aim is to direct visitors’ attention towards the call-to-action, rather than choose a perfect color, choose the color that makes your CTA stick out. What this means is, therefore, that with this relatively easy and effective strategy, it is almost inevitable that conversion rates will improve.